“Agra has about 7,000 leather-footwear manufacturing units, and at least 20-30 % of them have shut down since the new tariff laws,” says Manoj, a shoemaker who has worked with export houses in the city for the last 15 years. “The rest are struggling.”
Agra is one of India’s oldest shoemaking cities, a dense cluster of small workshops, factories, and exporters employing an estimated 400,000 people.
For decades, India’s leather and footwear sector has been a key source of employment and export strength. Agra alone contributes roughly 28% of India’s leather-footwear exports. But since Trump’s 2025 tariff hike on Indian imports, the story has changed.
The Tariff That Stopped the Machines
On 27 August 2025, the U.S. implemented new duties of up to 50% on many Indian exports, including labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, leather goods and footwear. Overnight, Agra’s shoes became very expensive to land in American ports. Thousands of workers, mostly migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have returned home.
“We were suddenly out of work, and out of wage,” Manoj says.
There are exporters who secure foreign contracts. Mid-size units that assemble and finish. And at the base, the artisans. Many of them work on daily wages, earning between ₹300 and ₹500 a day.
What this means for people, craft and place
When a factory delays wages, the knock-on affects families, neighbourhoods and entire supply chains.
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Workers in Agra, many of whom migrate from nearby districts, a week without pay can mean hunger or the long road back to their village.
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Small units, with limited working capital, struggle to pay rent, utilities and labour when production falls.
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Craft traditions, stitching, leather-cutting, finishing, risk being lost if the next generation sees no path in the trade.
India, the Maker Without a Name
India produces over 2 billion pairs of footwear every year, second only to China.
The country’s leather and footwear sector employs around 4.4 million people, contributing billions in exports annually. And yet, for all that scale, India has very few footwear brands that people can name with pride.
We make for the world, but the world doesn’t know our names.
Our craftsmanship travels globally, our identity doesn’t.
The Tariff as a Mirror
Trade wars are brutal, but they can also be mirrors.
They reveal dependence. They expose fragility.
They make us see how much of our economy rests on someone else’s demand.
For years, we’ve worn “Make in India, for the world” like a badge of pride.
But what if that phrase is also our blind spot?
What if it’s time to edit it to: Make in India, for us?
Because the truth is, we have everything we need:
The raw material. The skill. The labour. The design sensibility.
What we lack is branding, storytelling, and belief.
A Chance to Begin Again
We’ve built the global fashion economy, just not our own. Maybe this is the moment to build brands rooted in our soil for our people, our economy, our pride.
Maybe the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs, designers, and storytellers will see in Agra not a dying industry, but a sleeping one. And this isn’t just a patriotic argument. It’s an economic one.